April Fools’ 2009 across the tech world
By Nicole Kobie in Editorial
Posted in Uncategorized on
It’s 1 April, so the tech world has yet again flooded the internet with spoofs, jokes and hoaxes. And some of them are pretty good.
My favourite landed in my inbox this morning, with Opera pushing a new feature in the next version of its browser. Face Gestures will let users control their web experience by smiling or “flaring a nostril.” From the release:
“In 2001, we introduced Mouse Gestures in Opera 5.1. At that point we knew we were on to something,” said Jon von Tetzchner, CEO, Opera. “We already had keyboard shortcuts in the very first version of Opera, but once we introduced voice control in Opera 8, we had only one input mechanism left–the face. Opera Face Gestures represent the next frontier in browser control.”
Genius. There’s also a brilliant video here.
Google, as always, offered up a few. Chrome is now available in 3D - complete with printout glasses - and Google has announced Cognitive Autoheuristic Distributed-Intelligence Entity (CADIE), a new autonomous problem-solving AI, which made it’s own web page.
Microsoft has released a new Xbox game, Alpine Legends — which I would love to play. Forget SingStar and Rockband, in this mocked up release, you get to yodel along to classics such as “Whose spit is in my horn?” and “More goat bell (It needs)”. And, you get a free goat with purchase.
Reddit has redesigned it’s website… to look like Digg. Though it is pretty confusing when you’re actually flipping between Digg and Reddit, it looks pretty good. Remarking on the Digg-like changes, Reddit said in its blog: “At last, change has come to reddit. Let us rejoice.”
Fark has done a similar change, but now looks like Facebook. Could Farkbook finally make social networking interesting?
Pirate Bay seems to have joined forces with Warner Bros… hey, maybe one day…
And the Guardian has jumped on the Twitter bandwagon, with the announcement that the newspaper will now report in 140-character tweets. I don’t think anyone will be fooled, but it’s worth it for the line: “Experts say any story can be told in 140 characters.”
YouTube is flipping all its videos upside down, which is rather disorientating, but then Rick Astley has that affect on me.
Amazon has created cloud computing, in the clouds, with a blimp data centre.
Did you see any we missed? Did any of these catch you out? Let us know in comments…
Rated: 100% (2 votes)
Loading ...Comment by Fiona - April 1, 2009 on 11:30 am
Here’s one: Pigeons to be used to directly target consumers http://www.brandrepublic.com/News/MostDiscussed/895382/Pigeons-used-directly-target-consumers/
Comment by - April 1, 2009 on 11:55 am
You missed the Symbian Toaster (http://blog.symbian.org/2009/04/01/symbian-based-toaster-announced/)
and the iPlayer toaster
(http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/bbcinternet/2009/04/bbc_iplayer_now_available_on_a.html)
Pingback by - April 1, 2010 on 9:02 am
[…] had a few good ones last year, and celebrated this year by… er… taking on piracy. It’s not a joke, apparently, […]
Trackback by - February 9, 2012 on 5:36 am
sopa legislation sponsors…
[…]well as fencing leader Per Henrik Ling (1777-1839), who examined therapeutic massage on China[…]…
Trackback by - February 9, 2012 on 8:09 am
greenpeace australia campaigns…
[…]various points where Judge Rodgers may have failed to exercise […]…
Make a comment
Tag cloud
Archives
- May 2010
- April 2010
- March 2010
- February 2010
- January 2010
- December 2009
- November 2009
- October 2009
- September 2009
- August 2009
- July 2009
- June 2009
- May 2009
- April 2009
- March 2009
- February 2009
- January 2009
- October 2008
- September 2008
- August 2008
- July 2008
- June 2008
- February 2008
- November 2007
- October 2007
- September 2007
- August 2007
- July 2007
- June 2007
- May 2007
Most commented posts
- Internet Eyes' CCTV game lets us all be Big Brothers
97 comments
- What feedback does the government really want on ID cards?
- How's this for over-hyped: Apple tablet details leaked on Twitter
- Getting burned by Computer Tan
- Dell gets a sex change to Della
- CERN is not going to kill us all...
- 10 worst iPhone apps
- Facebook doesn't cause syphilis
- Blogger protected Belle de Jour with Googlewhack
- Roundup: April Fools 2010 in the tech world
Highest Rated Blog Posts
- Working in the great outdoors... (100%)
- The space cheese has been recovered (100%)
- Google Buzz leaves me anti-social about networking (100%)
- Trade shows worth the trouble? (100%)
- CERN is not going to kill us all... (100%)
- World's first systems analyst has died (100%)
- Cern's big day is September 10 (100%)
- April Fools' 2009 across the tech world (100%)
- Pirate Bay's DDo$ attack (100%)
- Is Facebook racist? (100%)
